Conversations: Faith and Facts

Helena
People who believe there is such a thing as a loving caring omnipotent being have always had a tough time, for examples of God’s failure to protect humanity are everywhere to be seen. The city of New Orleans, for instance, was destroyed by a hurricane not too long ago. More than a thousand people died; tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions; and nearly a million were displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Hurricane Katrina struck shared the Abrahamic belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate God.

Zoe
Following that line of reasoning, what was God doing while Katrina laid waste to their city? Surely He heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were, undoubtedly, on the whole, good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Do we have the courage to admit the obvious? – These poor people died talking to an imaginary friend.

A Short Digression on the Pig

‘All religions have a tendency to feature some dietary injunction or prohibition, whether it is the now lapsed Catholic injunction to eat fish on Fridays, or the adoration by Hindus of the cow as a consecrated and invulnerable animal (the government of India even offered to import and protect all the cattle facing slaughter as a result of the bovine encephalitic, or “mad cow,” plague that swept Europe in the 1990s), or the refusal by some other Eastern cults to consume any animal flesh, or to injure any other creature be it rat or flea. But the oldest and most tenacious of all fetishes is the hatred and even fear of the pig.

It emerged in primitive Judaea, and was for centuries one of the ways—the other being circumcision—by which Jews could be distinguished. Even though sura 5.60 of the Koran condemns particularly Jews but also other unbelievers as having been turned into pigs and monkeys—a very intense theme in recent Salafist Muslim preaching—and the Koran describes the flesh of swine as unclean or even “abominable,” Muslims appear to see nothing ironic in the adoption of this uniquely Jewish taboo.

Real horror of the porcine is manifest all over the Islamic world. One good instance would be the continued prohibition of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, one of the most charming and useful fables of modern times, of the reading of which Muslim schoolchildren are deprived. I have perused some of the solemn prohibition orders written by Arab education ministries, which are so stupid that they fail to notice the evil and dictatorial role played by the pigs in the story itself.

Orwell actually did dislike pigs, as a consequence of his failure as a small farmer, and this revulsion is shared by many adults who have had to work with these difficult animals in agricultural conditions. Crammed together in sties, pigs tend to act swinishly, as it were, and to have noisy and nasty fights. It is not unknown for them to eat their own young and even their own excrement, while their tendency to random and loose gallantry is often painful to the more fastidious eye.

But it has often been noticed that pigs left to their own devices, and granted sufficient space, will keep themselves very clean, arrange little bowers, bring up families, and engage in social interaction with other pigs. The creatures also display many signs of intelligence, and it has been calculated that the crucial ratio—between brain weight and body weight—is almost as high with them as it is in dolphins.

There is great adaptability between the pig and its environment, as witness wild boars and “feral pigs” as opposed to the placid porkers and frisky piglets of our more immediate experience. But the cloven hoof, or trotter, became a sign of diabolism to the fearful, and I daresay that it is easy to surmise which came first—the devil or the pig. It would be merely boring and idiotic to wonder how the designer of all things conceived such a versatile creature and then commanded his higher-mammal creation to avoid it altogether or risk his eternal displeasure. But many otherwise intelligent mammals affect the belief that heaven hates ham.’

– Hitchens. C. 2007. God Is Not Great London, Great Britain: Atlantic Books (2008) p. 37-38

The Holy Quran Experiment

Muslims are often accused of following a religion that has no place in Western culture. This made us wonder: What about Christianity? – A religion that has influenced our culture greatly.

For this experiment we have purchased a Bible and have disguised it as the Holy Quran. We then highlighted a couple of shocking verses that are in great contrast with modern Western values. Let’s see what happens when we read these passages from the Bible to some people while leading them to believe these passages are from the Quran.

“And if ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk contrary unto me; Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins. And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.” [1]

“Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.” [2]

“When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets: Then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her.” [3]

“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” [4]

What are your initial thoughts?

‘This sounds ridiculous.’ ‘Well, I didn’t know that this kind of stuff was also in this book.’ ‘How can anyone believe this? It sounds incredible to me.’ ‘Cutting off people’s hands, I mean, apparently that’s just the way they are.’ ‘If you have been raised with this book and these kinds of thoughts it’s going to influence the way you think.’ ‘To me this sounds like they want to oppress you and force you to believe what they believe.’ ‘The woman wants to help and as a result her hand gets cut off.’

If you were to compare this to the Bible, what are the biggest differences?

‘Hearing this, I would think the Quran is more aggressive.’ ‘Especially with things like cutting off people’s hands.’ ‘I think the Bible has a lot more positive things in it.’ ‘The story of the Bible is told very differently.’ ‘The biggest difference what you just heard here is the role of the woman.’ ‘The Bible is a lot less harsh and a bit more peaceful.’ ‘The world is changing and I think they have to adapt to it.’ ‘Most of our people have experienced the freedom to make their own choices and freedom of speech, and having that freedom allows you to think differently.’ ‘It bothers me that some people see these old writings as the absolute truth.’

Well, we have a little surprise for you. These beautiful verses from the Quran are actually from the Bible.

‘What the fuck!’ ‘Seriously?’ ‘What the hell?’ ‘I did not see that coming.’ ‘That is really unbelievable! That is sick, that’s really sick.’ ‘Are you for real?’ ‘Well done. You really got me.’ ‘It’s all just prejudice really, I always try not to be prejudiced myself but apparently I already am. It’s just something you do, unconsciously.’ ‘It has a lot to do with the media of course.’ ‘It’s important to keep thinking rationally when it comes to these things; try to think logically about things and use it to your advantage.’ ‘Of course I’ve heard Bible stories when I was young, and I went to a Christian school, but I really had no idea this was in there.’

– Courtesy of Dit Is Normaal, “The Holy Quran Experiment”

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[1] Leviticus 26:27-29
[2] 1 Timothy 2:11-12
[3] Deuteronomy 25:11-12
[4] Leviticus 20:13

The First-cause Argument

‘Perhaps the simplest and easiest to understand is the argument of the First Cause. (It is maintained that everything we see in this world has a cause, and as you go back in the chain of causes further and further you must come to a First Cause, and to that First Cause you give the name of God.)

That argument, I suppose, does not carry very much weight nowadays, because, in the first place, cause is not quite what it used to be. The philosophers and the men of science have got going on cause, and it has not anything like the vitality it used to have; but, apart from that, you can see that the argument that there must be a First Cause is one that cannot have any validity. I may say that when I was a young man and was debating these questions very seriously in my mind, I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day, at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: “My father taught me that the question ‘Who made me?’ cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question ‘Who made god?'” That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause.

If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument.

It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu’s view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, “How about the tortoise?” the Indian said, “Suppose we change the subject.” The argument is really no better than that.

There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the First Cause.’

– Denonn. L.E., Egner. R.E. Ed. 1961. The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell London, United Kingdom: George Allen & Unwin (1962) p. 587

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Bertrand Russell delivered the lecture Why I am not a Christian (of which this is an excerpt) on March 6, 1927 to the National Secular Society, South London Branch, at Battersea Town Hall.

On Martyrdom

“The only difference between suicide and martyrdom is press coverage.”

– Chuck Palahniuk

Competing Religions and Peace

‘The idea that Islam is a “peaceful religion hijacked by extremists” is a fantasy, and it is now a particularly dangerous fantasy for Muslims to indulge. It is not at all clear how we should proceed in our dialogue with the Muslim world, but deluding ourselves with euphemisms is not the answer. It is now a truism in foreign policy circles that real reform in the Muslim world cannot be imposed from the outside. But it is important to recognize why this is so—it is so because most Muslims are utterly deranged by their religious faith. Muslims tend to view questions of public policy and global conflict in terms of their affiliation with Islam. And Muslims who don’t view the world in these terms risk being branded as apostates and killed by other Muslims.

But how can we ever hope to reason with the Muslim world if we are not reasonable ourselves? It accomplishes nothing to merely declare that “we all worship the same God.” We do not all worship the same God, and nothing attests to this fact more eloquently than our history of religious bloodshed. Within Islam, the Shi’a and the Sunni can’t even agree to worship the same God in the same way, and over this they have been killing one another for centuries.

It seems profoundly unlikely that we will heal the divisions in our world through inter-faith dialogue. Devout Muslims are as convinced as you are that their religion is perfect and that any deviation leads directly to hell. It is easy, of course, for the representatives of the major religions to occasionally meet and agree that there should be peace on earth, or that compassion is the common thread that unites all the world’s faiths. But there is no escaping the fact that a person’s religious beliefs uniquely determine what he thinks peace is good for, as well as what he means by a term like “compassion.” There are millions—maybe hundreds of millions—of Muslims who would be willing to die before they would allow your version of compassion to gain a foothold on the Arabian Peninsula. How can interfaith dialogue, even at the highest level, reconcile worldviews that are fundamentally incompatible and, in principle, immune to revision? The truth is, it really matters what billions of human beings believe and why they believe it.’

– Harris. S. 2006. Letter To A Christian Nation p. 27-28

16/vii mmxv

The sun’s core is so hot that a piece of it the size of a pinhead would give off enough heat to kill a person 160 kilometres away.

As a child, writer and comedian Stephen Fry owned a mouse called Snowball.

According to the Qur’an, Satan himself was left-handed.

The English chemist Sir Humphry Davy was so famous in his lifetime that he once received a letter from Italy addressed simply SIR OMFRE DEVI / LONDRA.

In Latin, ignoring a difference in pronunciation, anus either means ‘anus’ or ‘old woman’.

See other: Quite Interesting Facts

Lucille is Always Right

Daniel Dennett: The main thing we want to talk about is “What should we do? What is the moral course of action to take?” And if that is to be a reasonable discussion, we have to take a few cards off the table.

Bill Moyers: Such as?

Dennett: – The faith card. We have to take the faith card off the table.

Moyers: What do you mean “take the faith card off the table?” I mean, if one is a man of faith one can’t take the gene out.

Dennett: Well, you know, Lucille says you’re wrong. … You don’t know who Lucille is? – She’s a friend of mine. She’s always right. – I can’t play that card in an argument! It’s just rude of me to say “Well, Lucille says you’re wrong.” and you say “Who’s Lucille?” and I say “Friend of mine. Always right.”

– The Charlie Rose Show: A Conversation With Philosopher Daniel Dennett (April 4, 2006)